


If You Let My Soul Out (It'll Come Right Back to You)

by grand_adventure_running



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Blood and Gore, Caretaking, Episode Tag, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Roman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:47:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grand_adventure_running/pseuds/grand_adventure_running
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pulled from the belly of the beast, they clean him up. An extension of the scene in S2, Episode 9: Tintypes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Let My Soul Out (It'll Come Right Back to You)

**Author's Note:**

> This one is a personal favorite of mine. As soon as I saw this scene, I knew I had to revisit it. For as unapologetic with gore and body horror as this show is, this was a perfect scene to draw out a gentler, more intimate atmosphere and I needed to write it. Title taken from “Nitesky” by Robot Koch.

“You’re killing him,” Destiny cries, just a whimper of sound behind him.

Roman ignores her because he knows what he needs to do, remembers every time he’s seen Peter turn, a constant pattern of rebirth, peeling back one layer for another. He’s wondered before if Peter would ever run out, if he would ever get down to that last tender layer of skin. Maybe it’s time to find out.

His arms strain with the terrible work of pulling apart the wolf’s head, and he ignores its awful cries, which give way to the crack of bone and snapping of tendons. He pulls back the wolf skin, exposing the shining red insides, the dangling, weeping cords of veins and spurting arteries, and the fraying muscle that springs up in the wake. Then Roman reaches down into the ruin of the wolf’s body, down into the gaping hole of the throat, until he feels something else and grasps it. He hauls back, his hand clamped vice-like on Peter’s wrist. And then Peter, naked and slick with blood, emerges from the wolf body, slipping to the floor in a rush.

Roman drops the empty carcass, a hollow shell now, panting for breath as he stares at Peter, birthed once more from his previous body.

Destiny swears breathlessly and drops to Peter’s side, her words shaken and unintelligible with her sobs. She touches him, rolls him onto his back and pulls him into her lap. Bending over him, she tries to rouse him, to get a response, but Peter only trembles in her arms, an involuntary spasm of movement that scares Roman. There’s no telling what going huntsman on the big, bad wolf will have done to Peter.

“He’s breathing,” she says at last.

Roman relaxes, filled with breathless relief. His heart is still pounding, a terrible, protective bloodlust in his veins. But the danger has passed; the masked assassins dead, their blood cooling on his floor in various locations of the house. A glance behind him shows that Miranda is all right (she’s not, not really, but she’s holding it together for now) and Nadia is fine. Her bright blue eyes stare back at him, completely calm.

Destiny sniffs, breathes hard, and says, “We need to clean him up. Miranda, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, her voice too quiet, caught at the back of her throat. Her hand covers Nadia’s head protectively.

“Can you please go start the water in the bath?”

“Sure. Is he…?”

“I don’t know. Let’s just get him cleaned up first, okay?”

“Right, okay.” Miranda steps around them carefully, holding Nadia firmly to her body, and leaves the nursery more-or-less steady on her feet.

“Roman? Can you help me carry him?” Destiny asks, her voice fragile and a little shaky, but she’s quickly gathering herself back together.

“Yeah,” he says quickly, coming to her side. “Yeah, I got him.”

Roman crouches and gathers Peter up in his arms, expending very little effort as he takes Peter from Destiny, her eyes pained and her hands reaching after. He holds Peter carefully, one arm along his back and another beneath his legs, cradling his wet, trembling form against his chest. This close, the iron-rich scent of him is thick in Roman’s nose, cloying. He can almost taste it at the back of his throat.

He suppresses the ache in his throat that wants to taste, instead carries Peter to the bathroom where Miranda sits on the edge of the oversized bathtub, half full, with Nadia. The bath, outfitted with whirlpool jets and being triangular in shape, is big enough to fit two people easily, so Roman doesn’t think twice about stepping into it and lowering himself into the water, Peter slung across his lap, his dark head tipped back, limp, showing the vulnerable length of his throat. That dark, ugly place in Roman that rests just beneath the surface, full of fangs and preternatural strength, rises again out of defense for Peter. Strangely, it makes him calm.

Roman looks up at them: Miranda mute and afraid, Destiny kneeling pale-faced beside the bathtub, and Nadia ever watching him with those eyes of hers, understanding more than should be possible. For just a moment, Roman finds accord with her, an acknowledgement between two beasts curling around their loved ones. But then it passes and Nadia’s secrets are hers once more.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tells them.

Roman doesn’t know where the words come from, perhaps from the confidence, the red satisfaction of protecting his home, his child. His friend.

He cups warm water in his palm and rubs his hand against Peter’s skin, the blood sluicing off his body in rivulets. The bath water rapidly turns red, collecting against the sides of the tub, so Miranda leaves the water running and opens the drain just a crack. Roman soaks Peter’s hair and squeezes out the excess, wipes his face and throat and chest clean with just his hand while Destiny reaches into the water and does the same to Peter’s legs.

Between one cupped palm full of water and the next, a thought comes to Roman with such startling clarity that his calm wavers. He realizes how familiar Peter has become to him, mind and body. From shared dreams to shared beds.

Is it strange, he wonders, that the body he touches now was familiar to him long before he first touched Peter in the rumpled sheets of his bed? The line of his collarbones and the breadth of his shoulders, the sparse hair on his chest and below his navel, the slope of his back to his hips—contours that Roman’s eyes have traced time and again from watching Peter undress and shed his human form. But now he knows the texture of Peter’s skin, the rough palms of his hands and the softness of his thighs, felt him eager and hot and sweat-slick.

They’ve come so close. There isn’t anyone Roman knows better than Peter.

His heart gives an almighty thud in his chest. He can’t lose Peter. Roman did the only thing he could, but there’s no telling if it’s enough.

They clean Peter up and drain the bathwater, leaving a film of red in the tub. When Miranda brings over a towel, they dry him off while he lies cradled in Roman’s lap. They retreat to the only room in the house yet untouched by the attack, by the blood, and Roman lays Peter down on the dark sheets of his bed, pulls a thick fur blanket over him, like a pelt, black like Peter’s pelt. He has stopped shaking, at least, but no one knows when he’ll wake up. If he’ll wake up.

Earlier calm fading entirely, Roman changes out of the pants he’d worn from the hospital, now completely soaked through, and out of the bloodstained shirt for similar but drier clothes. Destiny takes her place beside Peter’s head, wiping a damp cloth over the rusty smudges they missed. They all watch Peter as he sleeps, seemingly undisturbed, and still, at a loss, they are pulled tight with uncertainty.

“There must be something we can do. Someone we can take him to,” Roman says. He pulled Peter from the wolf, he saved him. It couldn’t end like this, could it? After everything they’ve done, everything they’ve fought for, with not even a whimper?

“Well, the only other person I know of is dead in the other room,” Destiny says.

Before the full weight of _nothing, there’s nothing, I’m going to lose him again_ can settle, Peter gasps and jerks awake. Destiny steadies him with her hands, brings him back against the pillows, soothing him with quick assurances, her fingers curling into his hair. Shocked still, hardly daring to believe their luck, the leap of _oh god, oh god, we’re okay_ inflating his lungs _,_ Roman watches Peter’s chest rise and fall as he catches his breath, the arm that reaches back for Destiny, how his mouth tilts at the corners with disbelief, hope, as Peter takes in the sight of them all here.

Finally, Peter’s gaze rests on him. “It’s over?”

“Yeah,” Roman says. “Yeah.”

Of course it’s not over. It’s never over. But this one thing, the masked cult, is no longer a danger to them. They’re safe for now, together and alive for now. Roman will continue to fight for them, fight to keep them all, and he knows Peter will do the same.

Peter tips his head at him in a lazy almost-nod and relaxes back against Destiny. She wants him to rest for a bit longer, judging by her reluctance to move away from him, and that’s fine.

There’s more cleaning up to do.

 

~+~

Later, when Roman and Peter are piling the bodies into the back of an Institute van, he can’t stop watching Peter from the corner of his eye. Watching the way he moves like he still hurts, like he still has the wolf pressing at his bones, and none of it sits well with Roman. He’s hoping all Peter needs is more time, more rest, that his actions haven’t permanently broken something in him.

Peter repositions a foot hanging too far out of the back and shuts the van’s door firmly. He leans against it and catches Roman’s eye. His body is curled forward, unable or unwilling to straighten, but he has lost the hunched shouldered, wounded animal look. His arm no longer presses protectively against his side.

Roman takes a step forward.

“Was it bad?” Peter asks, his voice low but clear.

“Yeah,” he replies, the word a rough catch in the back of his throat.

Peter nods, absorbing what Roman hasn’t said.

“Wasn’t sure if you’d come back from that,” Roman is compelled to add.

Because he can’t rid himself of the image: those gold eyes gone yellow-green, nearly all trace of the human Peter once was lost behind the animal. And still Roman had seen the plea for release.

“Me neither,” Peter confesses. “Thank you. For what you did.”

Roman shakes his head, taking another step closer so they’re just a scant foot apart. His thanks isn’t necessary. “Just don’t make me do that again.”

“I’ll try. Can’t promise anything.”

It’s what he expected, honestly.

Roman shifts his weight, brings them closer. Peter’s blue gaze is heavy, watching him carefully. The air draws tight and palpable between them, hard to breathe. There’s no thought, only this: the beat of Roman’s heart, the catch of his lips on Peter’s lips, the scratch of Peter’s facial hair, the faint salt smell of sweat. Roman touches Peter’s jaw with just his fingertips, holding him delicately. It lasts a moment, two moments, the space of a few heartbeats, and then Roman steps back, drops his hand. Peter had moved only to grasp the edge of his coat and now his hand hangs in the open air, still reaching.

They are standing on blooded snow. Their breath billows out in cloudy swirls of vapor. What are they doing, Roman thinks and then all thought dissolves down to this: he can still feel Peter’s mouth on his and he wants it again.

But they don’t do this. They should. They should have done sooner. It’s good and they fit.

No one knows them better than each other, mind and body.

Peter realizes it, too. His hand reaches again, falling just short, so Roman steps back into his space, bending his head and holding Peter’s face in his hands. They kiss, an eager push and pull that puts Peter’s back against the van’s rear doors. They move together smoothly, without the awkwardness and resistance Roman had been expecting, instead settling into the places they find ready and waiting for them in each other. A space built over time, waiting only for them to take that last step towards each other.

They pull apart, catch their breath.

Peter’s head leans back against the door, one corner of his mouth curling. “Fuck,” he breathes.

Roman laughs, the sound of it throaty. “Yeah.”

They keep watching each other with a lingering hunger, calculating. It’s Roman who finally relaxes, loosening his posture, because this isn’t really the time nor the place. There’s more to do and Destiny and Miranda are both waiting for them to return inside and help put the house back to rights.

Peter sees this and straightens from his near-slouch against the van. The glance he gives Roman before he walks back to the house is a promise.

Roman watches his back, trailing his fingers over his mouth, touching the sensitive places where Peter’s facial hair rubbed against his skin. He smiles, eager for Peter to make good on that promise later, and follows him.


End file.
